VANCLEAVE, Miss. — A man who breeds reticulated pythons in Mississippi witnessed the birth of a mutant cyclops snake.

Tyree Jimerson told Newsweekmagazine Monday that he was tending to his most recent clutch of python eggs when he determined that the snakes inside were developed enough that he should start cutting the shells open. This practice is common in snake breeding; it ensures that the young make it out of the egg.

But one, which his wife cut open, had a funny color.

The snake inside had the umbilical cord around its neck.

“When I pulled its head out, it just really freaked me out,” Jimerson said.

The newborn snake had two eyes in the same socket and no functional snout.

The snake was very weak and couldn’t hold its head up, Jimerson said. He had heard of this phenomenon before.

“Someone else had already had one that was very similar, like a cyclops, and it just wouldn’t live. So I went ahead and euthanized it," Jimerson said.

Tyree Jimerson of Vancleave, Miss., pulls a newborn reticulated python from its egg in 2018. The baby was born with both eyes in one socket, and its lack of snout was causing weakness so it was euthanized shortly afterward.(Photo: Courtesy of Tyree Jimerson)

Jimerson took photos of the baby python then put its body in the freezer. He asked his wife, who works as a mortician, for some preservatives.

Jimerson is thinking about selling the snake and has been offered $750.

The python may have had a condition called cyclopia, in which the embryo’s face becomes too narrow while developing. In this case, the two eye orbits became one, and both eyes rested in the same space.

In other cases, an animal will just have one large eye. Pigs, cattle, humans and even a shark have had this condition.

Cyclopia often affects the brain, so animals with these mutations rarely survive long after birth.

Although shark populations are declining on a global level, the Mississippi Sound appears to have a stable and healthy population of coastal sharks such as this blacktip. Brian Broom/The Clarion-Ledger